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Freedom in the World 2010: erosion of freedom intensifies
2010: Assessing global freedom
Authors:
A. Puddington
Publisher:
Freedom House, 2010
In a year of intensified repression against human rights defenders and democratic activists by many of the world’s most powerful authoritarian regimes, this index from Freedom House unsurprisingly asserts to have found a continued erosion of freedom worldwide.
The index details a number of key findings including:
- In 2009, declines for freedom were registered in 40 countries, representing 20 percent of the world’s polities
- In 22 of those countries, the problems were significant enough to merit downgrades in the numerical ratings for political rights or civil liberties.
- The year also featured a drop in the number of electoral democracies from 119 to 116, the lowest figure since 1995
- There has been series of disturbing events such as violent repression of protesters on the streets, lengthy prison sentences meted out to peaceful dissidents, attacks on leading human rights activists, and continued terrorist and insurgent violence
- Judicial systems on the whole remain weak, unable to act independently or apply the law equally to all members of society.
Recommendations/conclusions include:
- There should be a significant public access of major political parties to the electorate through the media and through generally open political campaigning
- There should be a competitive multiparty political system
- With some exceptions, the societies that embraced democracy during the Cold War’s waning years and immediately after the dissolution of the Soviet Union have retained their array of free institutions
- The notion that things could have been worse is poor consolation for a year in which freedom showed some measure of decline in roughly 40 countries
- Authoritarians prefer alliances with other authoritarians and continue to regard the world’s democracies as adversaries.
